Custom WordPress Development: 7 tips to improve the functionality of your website

Custom WordPress Development is a common term – and as a website owner, you may be wondering, what does that mean? It is not enough to have a website online or even a blog – to stand out on the web, you need deeper functionality than the standard WordPress platform itself can give you.

 Use WordPress plugins to add functionality and make your website easier to use. Through the use of plugins, it is possible to utilize WordPress to add more features and functionality.

You can also create a personalized customer experience for your site visitors. 

 As a business owner, it’s essential to stay on top of new technologies to remain relevant in your industry, and this is especially true when you use WordPress as your platform of choice. The philosophy behind WordPress is that the system itself will improve over time and add more features.

 There are many ways to improve the functionality of a website. Here are seven tips for you to get started:

Seven tips to improve the functionality of your website

When it comes to WordPress, functionality is a hot topic. Since it’s open-source, the software is constantly under development, and each release promises to deliver significant improvements.

 Make your site work better for you with custom WordPress development—advanced features like Sliders, Custom Post Types, full-width layouts, and more. Plugins can be a quick fix to improve the functionality of your website.

1. Understand Your Main Objective 

Your main objective in developing a custom plugin or theme for your WordPress website should be to improve your visitors’ experience. It must be to solve a pain point for these types of WordPress websites, and it should do so in a way that is easy for you to manage and integrates easily with other core functions of your WordPress website.

Soon after that, you must optimize the software to meet your business needs with minimum effort. It means that there should be a little user interface (UI) or text that distracts from the content.

Your UI/UX design goal should be to help users accomplish what they want, often as quickly as possible. Design for readability first and foremost. Then think about making it easy for people to perform specific tasks.

2. Get Rid of the Demo Data

Have you ever had a website that you created to test an idea? It might have been a single-page application or an application that displayed content from another source.

If so, then you may have created a demo data collection page that doesn’t make sense. It may also be time to start getting rid of this data. Many small businesses rely on this method of gathering information for marketing and SEO purposes. The goal is to place a temporary page on their website that will collect data in the future.

3. Get your Theme Functions Ready

If you are working with someone inexperienced or not familiar with PHP, setting up custom functions can be a way to save valuable time and effort. Having suitable functions will also give you the freedom to develop new features while keeping your website’s same look and feel. You can take the time needed to get the functionality you need building.

You might be wondering how you can get started with custom development? The process is simple; download one of the free themes offered on WordPress.org and began writing your theme/installation instructions.

4. Ensure That Any Form Runs Through AJAX

Ajax forms, or trigger forms in WordPress, allow you to submit forms via a simple URL or by sending an email. You can also set up a list of actions for each form and have them all run through AJAX if the page is loading slowly or if issues are loading the page on your computer.

These types of forms are a powerful and flexible form method used for submitting forms to web servers. It enables the browser to submit data to a server even when the server isn’t entirely operational. The benefits of using this method include improved security and accuracy and reduced page load times.

5. Custom Post Types and Taxonomies

The custom post type allows you to define your unique layouts for pages. You can also add taxonomies to the custom post type to show related topics or tags under a headline. You can add these in other plugins and themes that you may use.

Apart from that, it has many useful features like pagination, fixed header positions and fixed footer positions for more prominent posts (so they don’t fill space incorrectly on the page).

Over the last few months, developments in the industry have made this kind of customization possible, making it easier than ever to build beautiful and custom websites for your business or projects.

6. Optimize Container Widths and Tag Lines

Container width is an essential factor when considering your website’s design. A narrow container can break the flow of your content and make it difficult for search engines to display images and texts correctly.

Tag lines should be at least two lines wide and include keywords that describe what the container contains. The most effective containers use white space between elements to break up long blocks of text or images. Always have alt attributes when using images on a website.

Having consistent container widths and tag lines improves the overall user experience when you load your site. This helps ensure that users can see all the elements on your page with minimum loading time. It also ensures that your page loads faster, which can help you generate more leads and conversions. The better your page looks, the more traffic you’ll generate.

7. Localization or Translation of Content

 Localization or translation of content can refer to making the website available in a different language or locale. Some popular plugins for this purpose are WP Localizer and WP Translator. The languages available for customization include English (UK/US), French, Spanish and Italian.

 To gain more exposure and more clients, you need to develop a skill set that demonstrates value in your niche. The easiest way to do so is by translating content created in your target language into that language.

 Learn how to create a professional name for your client, including creating landing pages and email marketing in that target language. You may also find it helpful to localize content produced by your competitor for their marketing efforts.

Wrapping Up

WordPress is one of the most popular blogging and development platforms out there, and it comes loaded with great features developing new features directly into your site.

Developers and designers have built tons of plugins to extend the platform with new functionality, so there are many choices when it comes to customization options available for your locale.

 Although the core of WordPress has remained consistent since its inception, the functionality and design of websites now rival that of expensive custom-coded site designs.

 While choosing a plugin, make sure to evaluate what is best for your site format, your plugin’s architecture, your needs as a user, and much more!